Chris Serres

Serres writes about issues affecting society's most vulnerable populations, including the poor, elderly, mentally ill and people with cognitive and physical disabilities. He is married and has two children, Dominic, 12, and Emmanuelle, 10. He has been a newspaper reporter for 20 years.

The miniature houses, just a few hundred square feet each, would be cheap to build and highly affordable, appealing to the growing number of low-income people shut out of the metro area's housing market.

Minneapolis city leaders want to relocate hundreds of people living at a large and growing homeless encampment in south Minneapolis to one or more provisional shelters with medical and social services by early October.

Instead of driving everyone off, a coalition of agencies has flocked in to help, reflecting the unusual approach city officials and American Indian leaders are taking at the tent city near Hiawatha and Cedar.

The camp dwellers say they feel safer watching over each other in a large group than living scattered on the streets; they are determined to remain despite repeated attempts by the state to clear them out.

A legal immigrant could be denied a temporary visa or permanent residency through a green card if they use Medicaid, food stamps, low-income tax credits and other state and federal social service programs, local officials warn.

In a report issued this week, state investigators determined that June Alice Thompson had died in her room last October, but her body was not found for two days because staff at her assisted-living facility — the Commons on Marice — failed to perform daily wellness checks as promised.